History lesson: Sympathy for the Devil

eith, Paint it Black. Paint it Black. Paint it Black, you devil!” – A fan shouting a song request at Rolling Stones guitar player Keith Richards.

This week (June 29) in 1967, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones went on trial for drug possession in West Sussex, England, after police had earlier raided Richards’ home, where they actually discovered very few drugs – just some amphetamines Jagger had purchased in Italy, a small amount of heroin a friend had on him, and a few marijuana “roaches.” However, they also discovered Marianne Faithfull, Jagger’s girlfriend, nude except for wearing a bearskin rug. By most accounts it was the moral degeneracy of a semi-naked girl among eight men that shaped the legal strategy of the prosecutor, Queen’s Counsel Malcolm Morris. In what has become a legendary exchange, Morris asked Richards, “Would you agree in the ordinary course of events you would expect a young woman to be embarrassed if she had nothing on but a rug in the presence of eight men …?”

Richards replied, “Not at all.” Morris queried, “You regard that as quite normal?” Richards replied, “We are not old men. We are not worried about petty morals.” Richards would later claim, somewhat justifiably, that this exchange resulted in his sentence of a year in Wormwood Scrubs Prison because Jagger’s sentence was just three months and he was released pending appeal.

Richards only spent one night in Wormwood before being released on bail, and his sentence was later overturned because the prosecution’s emphasis on Maryanne Faithfull’s nudity was considered both prejudicial and a moral issue rather than a legal one.

Later, in a reflective mood, Richards concluded that what had partly motivated the prosecution was fear – fear that the rules were changing, and the status quo, which certainly included members of the British legal system, was being challenged. “Petty morals” such as no sex before marriage, no drug taking, and respecting one’s elders were not the young generation’s concern.

“I’m a guitar player in a pop band and I’m being targeted by the British government and its vicious force, all of which shows me how frightened they are,” Richard’s recollected. “We won two world wars and these people are shivering in their boots.”

Sure enough, that fear, and their defiance, boosted the band’s popularity. The Stones were seen as heroes who refused to submit to the “petty morals” of the establishment, and their reputation as the “bad boys” of Rock and Roll (The Beatles were the “good boys”) was solidified.

As Richards left Wormwood, the prison warden shouted to him, “You’ll be back.”

“Not in your time, I won’t,” Richards replied, getting into his chauffeur-driven Bentley.